Systematics

Soroseris, established and monographed by Stebbins (1940), is a genus of about seven species, distributed in the Himalayas (Pakistan, Kashmir, India, Nepal, Bhutan) and W China (Gansu, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Xizang, Yunnan) chiefly in alpine meadows. Its species are all perennial, rosulate and often acaulescent herbs and its capitula are congested in hemispherical or rarely cylindrical synflorescences.

Following Shih & Kilian (in Shih & al. 2011), Soroseris is here treated in a wider sense, also including the two monotypic genera Stebbinsia (accommodating S. umbrella) and Tibetoseris (accommodating T. depressa), see Synonymy. With respect to Stebbinsia, Shih & Kilian (in Shih & al. 2011) refer to the cytological and molecular work by Zhang & al. (2007, 2011), which confirmed that Soroseris and Stebbinsia are congeners. With respect to Tibetoseris, Shih & Kilian (in Shih & al. 2011) refer to the molecular phylogenetic analysis of subtribe Crepidinae by J. W. Zhang & al. (in prep.), which revealed that Youngia depressa, recently separated for convincing morphological reasons from Youngia in the new genus Tibetoseris (Sennikov & Illarionova 2008), which subsequently was recircumscribed similarly convincingly to become a monotypic genus for Y. depressa by Maity & Maiti (2010), actually is also nested in the clade of Soroseris. S. depressa, in fact, well agrees morphologically: it strongly resembles S. umbrella in leaf shape and habit, while in the number of phyllaries it is intermediate between S. umbrella and the remainder of Soroseris.

It has been shown by Zhang & al. (2011) that speciation in Soroseris is rather recent, the relationship between its species being not resolved in their molecular analyses. Also morphologically, distinction between the species is not always easy and more studies are needed.